Hitting a wrong note on choirs

AS A long-standing member of an enthusiastic, relaxed and welcoming church choir with a wide repertoire including a great many contemporary pieces, I was very disappointed in Anna Burnside’s somewhat cynical article ‘Something to Sing About’ (The Week, 26 February). Community choirs are great – don’t get me wrong – but clearly Ms Burnside has had limited, if any, inside experience of other genres of choirs which have been around a lot longer and many of whose members, I suspect, are also members and mainstays of our newer singing groups.

The comments quoted as being made by “choir leader” Harry Campbell regarding choir leaders in “Laura Ashley frocks” and cliquey choir members are at best misleading and at worst plain rude and somewhat ignorant. Cliques are, of course, to be discouraged, but Mr Campbell surely has enough life experience to realise that they can arise in any group of people – even a community choir.

For Ms Burnside’s information, singers are not either tenors or sopranos – that would mean the other half of the world who are altos and basses would be excluded. The ability to read music is certainly not a skill to be mocked or despised, as Ms Burnside’s article appears to do.

Indeed, it enhances and extends the possible repertoire of any choir. I would hope most choirs these days welcome those who don’t read and offer every encouragement to help them to do so. In my experience, most non-readers are keen to learn to do so and gain so much more by acquiring this skill to some degree.

I am certainly not a supporter of musical snobbery, but at the same time surely it is a bit below the belt to mock those who set out to achieve enjoyment and excellence in singing in a more traditional way.

Anne Derrick, Peebles